The subject matter disclosed herein relates to engine parts (e.g., movable engine parts) monitoring and, more specifically, to techniques to detect conditions, such as cracks, on operational parts of engines in real-time.
Moving parts in engines that develop one or more cracks may lead to an undesirable maintenance event of the engines if the crack goes undetected. For example, an undetected cracked turbine blade in a gas turbine engine may release from its holding disk, thereby potentially causing an undesirable maintenance event. In addition, an undetected cracked connecting rod in a reciprocating internal combustion engine could break apart and be released from its cap, thereby potentially causing an undesirable maintenance event.
Oftentimes, to inhibit the potential consequences of operating an engine with cracked movable parts, operators use schedule based monitoring of movable parts included in engines. Schedule based monitoring may refer to replacing a movable part after a certain time period regardless of the movable part's condition. That is, after a certain amount of use, such as 6 months, a year, and so forth, some movable parts are replaced without ascertaining the condition of the movable part. This may waste resources by replacing a movable part that may have a substantial remaining useful life. Also, schedule based monitoring may not catch a movable part that is cracked in time before it causes an undesirable maintenance event. In scenarios where condition based monitoring is used, sensors may be placed on movable parts of an engine to communicate data to a controller that monitors various characteristics of the movable parts. However, the sensors typically connected via wires to the controller. The wires on sensors attached to moving parts may become tangled as the engine operates, which may lead to the wires disconnecting from the sensor and/or the controller. Thus, it is desirable to enhance condition based monitoring of internal movable parts of engines while the engines are in operation to detect cracks before they develop further.